Anger is a Gift

Today’s post is on Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro. It is 463 pages long and is published by Tor Books. The cover is blue with the main character Moss in the center. The intended reader is someone who is interesting in books about hard topics. There is foul language, mild sexuality, and lots of violence in this novel. The story is told from third person close of the main character Moss. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Six years ago, Moss Jefferies' father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media's vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks.
Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals by their own school. New rules. Random locker searches. Constant intimidation and Oakland Police Department stationed in their halls. Despite their youth, the students decide to organize and push back against the administration.
When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.

Review- This is a difficult book to review for many reasons. The plot is a very tough one dealing with many topics like school-to-prison pipeline, racism, growing up, homophobia, mental illness, and police state. Just about every page brought a new issue to the point of being overwhelming. Add in a large cast of characters and this book is really packed. But I feel that is failed in so many aspects. Moss is the main character, he deals with anxiety and has panic attacks when confronted with police or questions about his father. That is very fair and I connected with Moss about those issues but Moss also expects the women in his life to handle his emotions for him, not help him learn how to feel his feelings without being overwhelmed but he wants to unload all his feelings into his mother and friend and they just deal with it. At times his mother is acting afraid of her son and the friend is just used as a mental punching bag for Moss to unload on and blame for not understanding every little thing that he is feeling at any given moment. Moss never learns to handle his emotions, he blames others for his feelings, and that burns over into everything in his life. It distracts from the very heavy material and I felt the plot was just not given the full light it deserves. The world is very harsh but I disliked Moss so much by the end of the book, I was just glad to be done with this book. I had high hopes for this book because of the issues it wanted to engage with and the book really failed to do so.

I give this novel a Two out of Five stars. I was given this book as a gift.